MKSAC Newsletter August 1996

The Second Novice Dive Weekend at Weymouth. Friday 21st June was the day we all travelled down to Weymouth. It took us about 3-4 hours to get down there. We all had a good journey. We all met up at the camp site at about 10:30PM. As soon as we all got settled we sat down and munched some "grease-tastic" fish and chips for our nosh up!. We all started talking about our journey down. Chris was going ballistic and ready to give one of her mass lectures to Tesco's headquarters about their drivers because she and Adrian got stuck behind a lorry going at snail speed.

Saturday… Morning: We were all up (but not awake) by about 6:50 with a cup of tea already made by Adrian (thanks Adrian). By 7:10 Chris had breakfast well under way, a full English breakfast. If that would not sink us, nothing would (thanks Chris).

After breakfast everyone was panicking and preparing! There was no need for us to panic because everything was under control. By 10:30 the boat was all ready to be launched. First dive Chris found the wreck after two goes. As we got into the water the visibility was really good, you could see most of the way down. We dived on the Spaniard. It was really good and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. The wreck was nothing more than a rusted shell but still very interesting to look at. We saw loads of different kinds of fish and some spider crabs which had made the boat their home. 2nd dive of the day After a meal at the Sailing Club and after our bottles were filled we were ready to dive again. This time we dived the Countess. This was a boat as well but upright. It had the same things on it as the last one but still was very interesting. You could have dived both of the wrecks time and time again and found something you missed last time.

We took Adrian back to get the trailer ready then Brian and Chris took us all out on the boat for us all to have a go at driving it. We all found it a laugh.

Sunday. It is our last day and we still have to do two dives. We had our breakfast and got packed and ready to go. We all set off to go and do the last two dives of the weekend, we all got ready as before and got into the boat to go and dive the Sand Barges. This dive was completely different to the rest. There was not a boat in sight, it was all rocks and sand. There were a lot of divers in the water but as soon as you got under the water you could not see another diver. This dive had a lot more colours, i.e. all the different kinds of plants and all the fish had bright colours and everything looked so calm and peaceful.

After we were all up we went for a trip round Weymouth harbour. There were two big sailing ships moored up. We went past them and moored up to fill the bottles. We all got funny looks from the people walking around because we were all still in diving suits. When the bottles were filled we went back to the sailing club to have dinner. After dinner we went to do the last dive. 2nd Dive By this time we were all pretty tired but Tim and Nicky went home because Nicky had some work to do for Monday. Apart from them going we were all ready to go again and got into the boat for our last dive before going home.

This time we were going to dive two boats which lay right next to each other. I found this dive was the most enjoyable. As we all set out in the boat, someone (not mentioning any names) tucked their sunglasses and car keys in their dry suit pocket and went diving. They only realised what they had done when they were taking their knife and snorkel out of their pocket after the dive.

Everyone who went loved it.